New Jerusalem
"A sea of grieving faces stares at the sky, powerless and terrified, held aloft by billowing black pillars. Our grand machines ground to a halt, the gears caked and clogged with blood.. Towers of flame and broken metal punctuate the skyline; glaring beacons of shattered enlightenment. We called the madmen heroes, and blamed everybody but ourselves..." Brother Martine Santiago, The Fall of New Jerusalem, 1283 S.V. New Jerusalem was a Universalian stronghold-world, one of many built across the galaxy's smaller worlds; they had a thing for naming them after old Earthen holy sites. These strongholds were built as reliquaries and training grounds, and eventually upgraded to fortresses after the Gates began opening. The Temple's ideology forbid it taking direct part in the Wars, and spent the conflict providing asylum, until demons and aberrant horrors got involved. Such strongholds fared better than most worlds, as they did not fear Rebels or Loyalists attacking them for the most part. The Infernalist and Alienist legions could only do so much with limited resources, so the Temple and their Pagan allies' victories were many. Though the Federation was collapsing, the faithful believed it could rebuild shortly after the dust settled. In the Charybdis system, New Jerusalem was busy preparing itself to be a staging grounds for a grand reconstruction project spearheaded by the Universal Temple. Though the planet is only twice the size of Luna, it was a verdant paradise with enough resources to make the dream a reality. Shielding technologies and powerful abjurative magitech had kept out the Damned and Corrupt, everyone figured it was only a matter of time. But, just as the project was about to begin, a terrible darkness appeared to ruin the Temple's carefully laid plans. In the mid-1200s, a terrible shadow wrapped itself around the whole planet, blotting it and all the stars around it out. For a full week, this mysterious patch of nothing obscured events on New Jerusalem, and then suddenly burst and faded back from whence it came. When the stars reappeared, telescopic equipment could see that New Jerusalem was in flames. All out civil war had erupted, millions of templari and refugees driven violently insane, slaughtering everything in sight, tearing the Temple's works down to their foundations. Ships that tried to flee were shot down by orbital cannons or seemed to self-destruct of their own volition. AIs and interconnected systems went haywire, cutting off communications and knocking out power sources. Psychics and astral travelers swore that some lingering presence of completely unwholesome nature had tainted the world, and left its maddening imprint around the planet's local space. There was no fighting back, no way to send help, all anyone could do was watch and hope for the best. One year after the conflict began, a great flare of divine energies swept the clinging darkness away. The presence had been shattered, but caused a maelstrom that swept across the Inner Worlds. All were subjected to a decade of fierce weather consisting of slimy black rain that spawned shoggoths and other horrors wherever it pooled. Every surviving starship and space station still activate at that time suddenly went dark, many ended up crashing into the planets below. In addition to this destruction, the Black Rains heralded the return of the Aboleth. The Temple, in its crippled state, sent whatever aid it could, but so much was lost that all the senior leadership went into exile on pilgramages to try and recover what had been lost. Most of the new governments have agreed that New Jerusalem should remain isolated and recognized as a No-Fly Zone, with no one being allowed to go in under threat of being shot down the minute they leave- if they can ever leave again. Only specially blessed and federally-sanctioned people are allowed to travel there, and often only then for short periods of time. There is a possibility many treasures wait to be discovered on New Jerusalem, but there is too great a risk of spiritual corruption of the worst sort getting offworld. It is a smouldering ruin of its former self; vast patches of desecrated land inhabited by insane mockeries of life lurk like cancers waiting to spread. Its corruption is absolute, and though many plans have been made to try and purify it, none have as of yet been attempted. Back to Worlds Back to Main Page